#HumpDayReviews: How to Make a Living as a Poet

I don’t have time to write a super long review today, but I just wanted to write a quick blurb for a book I read in 2015 that I found quite humorous as well as instructive.

The book is Gary Mex Glazner’s How to Make a Living as a Poet, published in 2005 by Soft Skull press. Along the same lines as Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist and Share Your Work!, Glazner’s book is part tongue in cheek, and part rethinking what it really means to be a Poet.

From the humorous warning plastered across the first page, suggesting “EXTREME INJURY AND/OR DEATH MAY RESULT FROM READING HOW TO MAKE A LIVING AS A POET,” it’s clear that the book is meant to poke a bit of fun at the altogether overly serious objective of “making a living as a poet,” yet at the same time it also contains plenty of great advice. Much as Wittgenstein once posited that a great, serious book of philosophy could be written as a series of jokes, Glazner injects both a dose of humor and some business sense into the proceedings.

In case you’re curious, I also write about this book for Jessica Pizza’s site, Poetry Has Value. Go on and check it out, and then see what else Jessica has been posting about valuing her own poetry as well as the poetry of others!